William Mahone (1826-1895) was
a railroad president before the Civil War, a general in the
Confederate Army, and afterward one of the most controversial of
all Virginia political leaders. As founder of the Readjuster
Party, which tried to reduce the amount of the expensive
antebellum state debt that the taxpayers had to pay, Mahone
formed a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and African
Americans. The Readjusters captured control of the General
Assembly in 1879 and in 1881 elected Mahone to a six-year term
in the United States Senate. Mahone lost the support of most
Democrats because of the alliance he and the Republicans had
made with the state's many black voters. By the end of the
century both major political parties had rejected participation
of African Americans in Virginia politics. The biracial alliance
that Mahone created during the 1870s and 1880s was radically
different from any other nineteenth- century Virginia political
party before or after. Mahone was one of many white Virginians
who attempted to succeed in politics by accepting the
enfranchisement of African Americans after the Civil War. His
short-term success demonstrated what was possible, but his
long-term failure illustrated the limits of what was attainable.